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Meet G-Unit, or as we lovingly call him, “Gandalf the White” (not because he’s a bit long in the tooth, but because he’s the wizard of developing the coolest betting & trading platform on the planet). Well, Gandalf didn’t always conjure up epic and magical code. He was born in Napoli, Italy, where he claims there is absolutely no mafia, so don’t even ask (the dons were very surprised when he graduated with a very wizardly degree in economics, after which he was sworn to secrecy on the whole mafia thing). In the spirit of thoughtful team interviews that allow our players and guests to take a dive into the world of betting, trading, and social games, we present our first look into the life of one of the dedicated people who make it all happen:

What was your proudest moment?
Birth of my baby girl Chiara

What is your second proudest moment?
Joining the betillion family

How did you get into the gambling industry?
I moved to the UK back in 2002. Offered a job at betfair. I had no idea who they were and what gambling was

What is the most interesting thing about gambling, according to you?
The professionals. They do not gamble, They are very much like traders in the city. They follow up rumors, they check stats, they try to make a strategy. Luck factor is for the average Joe

What are you working on now?
Re-engineering the current bet.tra.de platform (on which betillion is based). We’re moving from the typical start up monolith approach to SOA

Why is it important?
We need to be resilient, flexible, robust, and scalable for the change to come: horizontally and vertically. Low latency is not yet an issue yet, but we’re already working to address it when the game will be used for trading purposes by gazillions of users

How do you know the founders of betillion?
Through a trusted contact with whom I used to work in two different companies

Why do you buy into the betillion concept? Why is it special?
betillion is a completely different concept from traditional gambling games. It brings two elements. First, it allows for dynamic betting, which is very much luck based, comprising the very core of the app that revolves around trading said bets. The second aspect is very interesting. I still remember the study conducted by Stiglitz about the importance of information asymmetry. The game would level the field, as everyone would have exactly the same information available in real time (something that traditional games fail to offer).

What’s up for the future?
Making the betillion platform the envy of the gambling industry

Do you plan to buy any private islands off the coast of Dubai when betillion takes off and is wildly successful?
I was thinking of buying the Silverstone circuit, so I can keep my bike there and ride around the track whenever I like.

What do you wish you knew before you started working on betillion?
I knew it was going to be a challenge. But this is more than a challenge. It’s like a journey to the center of the earth by Jules Verne.

We are proud to have Gandalf on the team, and spearheading the betillion betting and trading social game, but if you ever want to hear more on our progress, or his work, please don’t hesitate to contact us through this website. As always, we are undergoing Beta testing of the betting and trading platform, and we encourage you to register to try the game during this exciting phase. Please visit http://www.betillion.com, or visit our Facebook and Twitter pages for real time updates.

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According to the Telegraph, the betting industry’s take during the two-week Olympic Games in London this year will exceed that in Beijing 20 times over (maybe because China can’t cheat as easily this time, so the betting is more fair! Ha!).

Interestingly, over 3 million people will take the plunge in the world’s oldest social activity, betting, and place their first ever bet on an athlete or event in the London Olympic. And betting activity is on the rise. What was the most popular Olympics event? The biggest draw for Betfair, the world’s largest internet betting exchange, was the men’s 100 meter final.

During the event over 19,000 individual users placed bets on the outcome of the race. Usain Bolt was responsible for more than one record that day! Overall, Betfair saw slightly under 100,000 customers making bets during the two weeks, a record number for the firm.

Betting holds a special place in gamesmanship, and we hope this tradition continues.

In October 2011, during my second year at Wharton, I was approached by George Georgiopoulos (WG’13) and invited to join a team (of what was then three people) in a UK-based online gambling venture. Unsurprisingly, I was apprehensive. The startup environment is ruthlessly unstructured and the gaming space is notoriously male-dominated; the product is market-making, disruptive, and completely unexpected in what is arguably the most regulated industry in the world; my background was seemingly incompatible. A lesser woman would have shirked these challenges, but opportunities such as the one George proposed are exactly why I came to Wharton.

“I’ll do it”, I told George without an ounce of hesitation, and since last November I have been working and building my expertise in a field dramatically different from my previous experiences.

The fledgling startup presented me with some interesting challenges. Despite the unique product offering, I knew that we had to establish the size of our market and quantify the scope of our potential penetration. Thus, I started to analyze current betting and trading trends in the UK, to profile the ideal British player, and to find “white space” to strategically position the game. In addition to research, I focused on understanding betillion’s unique offering to users. As a new product, betillion required testing before the official launch and called for a detailed online marketing plan that included search engine optimization (SEO) and social media strategy. Finally, I knew that we would need to build a creative design team to help betillion’s brand DNA from the very beginning.

As such, I decided to structure the marketing team in “triangular” way: online marketing would develop and implement the strategy in the e-channel; customer analytics would analyze the data and predict customer behavior; creative would prepare the web aesthetics and brand’s image. My work with betillion prompted me to reflect on the role of marketing at such an early stage of a startup’s life – how is it important?

I feel that marketing is infinitely more subtle than art or science. Similar to baker’s yeast, the mystical and necessary ingredient behind a tasteful and beloved product, a targeted marketing strategy is essential in the beginning of the brand-making process. Some of the most crucial and brand-defining decisions take place in the early stages of a startup’s life: how to position the product, who is the target customer, what are the product benefits, how to communicate the benefits and positioning. The fact remains that there are many fantastic products that never reach a wide audience because they were marketed poorly. In the online gaming industry, getting noticed is especially tough, because the customer has a huge variety of options and the space is ultracompetitive.

Big companies like Zynga have enjoyed success with the help of persistent and clear marketing strategies. I firmly believe that smart marketing can catalyze the growth of a business, whereas the lack of solid marketing objectives may lead to blindside failure, or worse mediocrity. The internet age ushered in some of the most sophisticated customer analytics modeling and data analysis techniques, and I feel empowered by the plethora of data I am able to use to allow betillion to reach its full potential. After all, betillion’s main DNA component is numbers and thus it is an inevitable part of the team’s culture; the entire logic and strategy is built behind data analysis, customer-centricity, and behavioral projections using probabilities models, evaluation of ROI measured in conversion rates and click-through rates (CTR). Even our daily productivity is measured on a program that allows supervision of everyone’s work with a glimpse; decreasing lead time between projects’ phases.

In short, marketing has played a significant part in betillion’s inception. It has defined betillion’s identity and image, even within the corporate culture, and has helped us set the map for the future. From a personal perspective, being involved in a startup while pursuing my MBA was by far the best decision I ever made, in the process having gained experience and exposure in an industry that was starkly different from my previous background. Working with Wharton MBA students in an unstructured environment truly broadened my horizons! Would I describe my experience as enjoyable? Yes! Risky? Actually, no! Unless you are referring to the game itself, which is that of betting and trading. Of course, if you are interested, you may sign up to try on the official website (Beta testing to be conducted throughout summer and fall months): www.betillion.com. Also, get to know us on our Facebook page: www.facebook.com/betillion.

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…not surprisingly! And Sony has a solid approach. Not only is the gaming giant attempting to break into a whole new pool of gamers, but it invested into attracting developers and building an ecosystem to support them.

Sony had first mentioned the new move at E3 in LA earlier this summer, but was able to share more tangible details at Gamescon in Germany. First, the company announced the brand new PlayStation Mobile Developer Program and a software development kit (SDK), which would allow developers to actively engage with the brand and work directly. Second, the company will be utilizing existing infrastructure, PlayStation Network (PSN), an online gaming site with a large user base. Strategically, Sony hit the jackpot, as the company will be expanding its offering with a very small chance of downside (if any).

This exciting new development is a great move for consumers who are ready to get their favorite game titles on a mobile platform, having been exhausted by the endless ‘villes iterations produced by the likes of Zynga.

What does a betting and trading game have to say about Bingo Friedzy, Facebook’s first online gambling application that uses real money? Well, as an aspiring game in a similar space, we are really excited!

“Real-money gaming is a popular and well-regulated activity in the UK and we are allowing a partner to offer their games to adult users on the Facebook platform in a safe and controlled manner,” Facebook said in a statement, according to Reuters.

These are incredibly progressive words from a company that has played it safe since its inception in 2006. With only 30% of its revenue generated by non-gambling games, an early foray into the real-money playing may be the push that Facebook needs to assuage investors’ uncertainty about the company’s revenue-generating prowess.

There is no doubt, Zynga’s Poker and Slot Machine games will soon follow, and the gaming giant has shared this ambition explicitly (according to the Financial Times). Both Zynga and Facebook struggle to support expectations of analysts in terms of revenue, and online gambling presents the perfect opportunity.

This move is not desperate, but rather calculated and forward-looking.

Mariya Nikiforova is a Wharton MBA focusing on management strategy. Her background is in lead generation online marketing. We’re proud to publish extended interview with Wharton eClub:

What is your role with Betillion? What recent projects have you worked on?

As the online marketing manager with Betillion, a social betting and trading gaming site, I am responsible for a three-prong strategy encompassing paid, owned, and earned media. Paid media refers to traditional direct-response channels that include search engine marketing and other forms of paid advertising (Google, Bing, Yahoo!, FacebookAds), aimed at purchasing traffic with a keyword-, context- or lifestyle-targeted approach. Owned media comprises branding, positioning, search engine optimization, social media representation, and any activity that grows Betillion’s presence organically (in the “free” environment).

Finally, “earned” media can be best described as the viral component of the overall online marketing strategy. Earned media is arguably the most unpredictable component, and near impossible to fabricate, as the brand can inspire the word-of-mouth, but not control it in the traditional sense. At this stage of Betillion’s life, I am primarily focusing on the paid and owned factors of the media strategy. My last project involved several Google and FacebookAds marketing campaigns in conjunction with an A/B testing initiative that allowed me to determine the best positioning for Betillion.

In the future, I would love to explore viral marketing, as this is my secret passion, and an area that I am interested in exploring further.

How do you address competition as a small startup?

Betillion is entering a highly competitive market of online gaming. As we introduce this social betting and trading game to our audience, we will focus on awareness, education, and customer analytics with the ultimate goal of competing with the likes of Zynga. That said, we monitor the practices of our peers closely. For example, we keep track of their social networking and organic content; we also follow their relationship with other brands. As we build our reputation, we must maintain a certain unspoken standard that comes only through consistent research of the market and its top and rising players.

How do you adapt and innovate online marketing strategy as the startup grows?

It is important to continuously seek the next big trends in not only advertising, but also in internet user behavior across the board (be it rage comics, memes, top tweets, or trending Google searches). I am also very interested in following the new media of expression, new devices, and new platforms. Now more than ever, it is important to stay flexible and to follow the preferences of users, rather than to target any specific outlet just because it may be the most popular at the moment. With Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple encroaching on each other’s core competencies, it is anyone’s guess where advertising, media, and ecommerce will go next!

My advice to startups is to really think about the main vision of the company and define it in terms of milestones on a timeline. With every milestone, you will find that your online marketing strategy will have to be adjusted. The worst thing to do is to rely on one approach for every situation based on past success – fluidity is key.